WV Rolls Out the Red Carpet – Welcomes China Trade Delegation
Every time we write about the China deal to invest an amazing $83.7 billion (!) in West Virginia, we still shake our head in disbelief. Pinch us–it seems too good to be true! We suppose if half that amount, even a quarter of that amount, ends up getting invested, it’s still an unbelievable bonanza for the Mountain State. We first brought you the news in early November that the Trump Administration, in cooperation with the WV Gov. Jim Justice Administration, had brokered and signed a deal for China to invest $83.7 billion in WV’s shale and petrochemical industries (see China Agrees to Invest Amazing $83.7 BILLION in WV Shale, Petchem). Since that initial deal was signed (in China) delegations of Chinese representatives have been visiting WV, no doubt assessing just where and how much they will spend. Last week such a delegation visited WV on a four-day “relationship building” mission. West Virginians are hospitable people (that’s been our experience)–and they turned on the charm last week. You might say WV rolled out the Red Carpet for the Red Chinese…
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Only in New York State do you find this kind of lunacy. Yesterday Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, announced a request for proposals (RFP) looking for an alternative to building a new pipeline to get more natural gas into New York City–where the gas is desperately needed. Yes, pipelines are the safest mode of transportation in existence. Yet Con Ed wants something less-safe. Why? They don’t say, but no doubt to avoid dealing with the increasingly violent enviro left that opposes anything to do with fossil fuels–particularly pipelines. In Con Ed’s RFP they throw out some helpful hints at what enterprising businesses might consider proposing: “energy efficiency” (i.e. turn the thermostat down); “beneficial electrification of space or water heating” (i.e. use electricity instead of natural gas for water heaters and heating your apartment); “demand response programs” (i.e. use less by shifting the time when you use the gas); “provision of biogas” (use biogas–cow farts–instead of filthy fracked gas). Dead last on the list: “distributed natural gas storage, CNG, or LNG”–if you *must* propose using natural gas, figure out how to get it into the city without a new pipeline. Use less-safe tanker trucks, or figure out how to store gas from existing pipelines. Most of Con Ed’s proposed solutions aren’t about getting more gas into NYC, they’re about using less gas overall. Yeah, only in New York…
Freedom in New York State is all but gone–snuffed out by a corrupt dictator by the name of Andrew Cuomo. Warning to other states: Be careful who you elect in high office. Cuomo is not content to simply destroy the drilling industry in NY–he wants to destroy anything to do with fossil fuels. Crude oil from the Bakken in North Dakota has, for some time, arrived in New York’s capitol city of Albany via rail cars where the oil is loaded on barges at the Port of Albany for a quick trip down the Hudson River. Cuomo went after those rail shipments, trying to slow them down or stop them altogether (see 
Last week MDN brought you the news about a vote from the Virginia State Water Control Board that gave Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline a non-approval approval (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Korean SK Holdings gets $10M dividend from Marcellus/Utica investment; plans for new CNG station near Scranton; public hearing tonight on natgas pipeline under the Potomac River; Tellurian plans pair of pipelines in southwest to feed LNG plant; pipeline to Mexico on track; anarchists brag about sabotaging railroad tracks in Pacific Northwest to stop fracking; energy sector biggest winner in tax overhaul; climate change activists used arbitrary adjustments to exaggerate sea level rise; and more!
Last week Columbia Pipeline Group (now part of TransCanada) filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin service on their Leach XPress pipeline. This is BIG and important news. In August 2014, MDN told you that Columbia Pipeline Group decided to move forward with investing $1.75 billion dollars for two new projects: Leach XPress and Rayne XPress (see 
For some time we’ve reported on the effort to pass new legislation in West Virginia on co-tenancy and joint development (see 
Whatever happened to the idea of fracking a shale well in Tioga County, NY using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, or propane)? We sometimes get asked that question. In July 2015 a group of landowners flying under the name of The Snyder Farm Group (five families make up the group) contracted with Tioga Energy Partners (based in Texas) to drill a fracked Utica Shale well, and follow it up with drilling a fracked Marcellus Shale well, using LPG and sand (see 
EXCO Resources continues to be a company in trouble. The company flirted with bankruptcy for some time, but in the end they effectively turned over control of the company to creditors this past summer in order to stay out of bankruptcy court (see 
A little-known (outside of northeast Pennsylvania) anti-driller, Vera Scroggins, was fined $1,000 in April 2015 in Susquehanna County court (see 
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling events.
We have been waiting for this day for a LONG time. Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an order to Rover Pipeline allowing Rover to restart all outstanding underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) projects, including the location at Tuscarawas River. All Rover HDD projects were stopped back in April following a string of “inadvertent returns” (i.e. leaks) of drilling mud, the most serious being a ~2 million gallon spill at the Tuscarawas River HDD location (see